


the death of violets

by rathxritter



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - No SHIELD (Marvel), F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-04
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2021-01-22 20:13:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21307940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rathxritter/pseuds/rathxritter
Summary: Scotland, 1948. Leopold Fitz and Jemma Simmons meet again. They’re best friends and one-time lovers, but there’s no sense of triumph over their survival. As the evening comes to an end, Jemma has to decide whether or not to stay for dinner.
Relationships: Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons
Comments: 12
Kudos: 16





	the death of violets

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd.

There was a set of fine China in front of them and a white teapot with blue flowers resting on a mismatched tea warmer. The flame of the small and consumed tea light, whose light was flickering and dancing as it burned itself out, looked like a miniature version of the flames that were blazing and crackling inside the fireplace. The living room was flooded with golden light that softened all edges and made the place look warmer and welcoming, less foreign and alien, cosy and intimate. The long dark shadows cast by the furniture resembled the one cast by the small sugar bowl that rested on the table next to the two cups.

“I say,” said Fitz, interrupting the comfortable silence that had settled between them at the beginning of the afternoon. “Would you like to stay for dinner?”

They were sitting at the kitchen table in front of the window. The clock in the living room went on and relentlessly ticked the time away, the small black pointers moving ever so slowly, as if nothing happened; as if their companionable near-silence that distanced them as much as it bound them was still standing; as if they were still looking at each other, hesitantly, attentively, always careful not to get caught as they studied the other’s face for any sign of indifference; as if she wasn’t afraid.

Jemma looked up, opening and closing her mouth, lost for words as a feeling of paralysis started to take her over. Why make up her mind when they could just as easily go on and sit there, never speaking of their mutual feelings, never mentioning how late it was, never discussing the fact that she had missed the last ferry?

“Haggis with neeps and tatties,” added Fitz. “I swear that it tastes better than it sounds.”

“I’m sure,” she replied and looked away.

Outside, the street was slowly starting to fog: mist coming from the sea, carried by a soft and salty breeze, lingered in the air and filled the place. The couple of lonely walkers that were headed home and walked with purpose and eagerness, looked like ghosts in their grey coats and woolly hats - ancient creatures haunting the streets of this small fishing hamlet; supernatural beings connected to nature; inhuman entities that knew every corner, every brick that would one day crumble and every stone that may crack in the frost.

The look Jemma had over this hamlet in the north of Scotland was almost complete: the place itself was devoid of all colour, cold, grey and misty. It was an eerie landscape, probably looked better any time that wasn’t the bleak midwinter, and was in contrast with the warmth inside Fitz’s house. However, the voices that came from the pier and echo in the air outside the window, filtering through closed doors and windows, made it appear more welcoming and familiar; they made the place feel buzzing, vibrant and ever so alive.

"They say we'll have snow."

"Oh."

"And if we do, if it does indeed start snowing, then I think- I think you should stay and spare yourself the trouble of travelling in bad weather."

“How long have we been friends, Fitz?” asked Jemma, ignoring him. She had no intention to let the weather dictated her choices although she could agree that it would be the most sensible thing to do.

“I don’t know. Some ten years? Maybe more. I never kept track of it, it just- was.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Why do you ask?”

Jemma shrugged. “Nothing. Nothing of consequence.”

They met at university, but had they been friends? Could they consider themselves friends back then when their paths had only occasionally crossed? They used to move in the same circles, which made things infinitely easier, for mutual friends and common acquaintances often encouraged them, if not forced them, to spend time together. Now, their meetings were sporadic, an entire relationship reduced to twelve long letters a year, written at the end of each month, and some phone calls if the occasion called for it.

Back in the day, she used to admire him from a distance: he was quiet and pasty, incredibly smart and ever so handsome. As much as now if not less. The smartest person she knew, but were they friends? She liked him, tender feelings that never seemed to go away, but were they friends? And if they were friends why didn't words come easily, effortlessly rolling off her tongue?

“I’ve been thinking,” she said as she stirred her tea with the spoon. “I hope you know that you’re the one person whose opinion I value the most.”

“What’s going on?”

“I mean it. I know that I never- I want you to know that whenever I’m in trouble, if I’m ever upset, if I need anything, a piece of advice or anything else, the person that first comes to mind is you.”

He smiled: a shy smile, a soft smile, a smile filled with fondness: his whole face brightening and lighting up. She felt the corners of her own mouth slowly rising as affection washed over her in waves. All she could think of was taking his hand and try, ask him if he remembered, but she didn't.

“The war didn’t change that,” she went on.

“And Achnacarry?”

“If anything, Achnacarry marked the beginning of our friendship. I don’t regret one thing that occurred between us and surely to goodness, I hope you don’t regret a thing either.”

“No, I don’t.”

No matter what they might say now, Achnacarry had changed everything: the beginning of their friendship as they knew it now, that linear and effortless relationship that some people envied while others thought it to be nauseating.

Achnacarry. She remembered the look on his face and her own nausea as she had stared at him, as he stood in front of her: a ghost, straight out of the past. That morning, amidst the orange leaves on the ground, she had declared her love - the words had slipped out with surprising easiness, on the basis of nothing but nevertheless true. He had hugged her and she had buried her face in the crook of his neck, breathing in his scent, feeling home in his embrace, feeling as if things were as they should be. And then she had pushed him away with such suddenness and violence that he had looked at her in bewilderment and fear, paralyzed and too afraid to move as she yelled at him, spit leaving her mouth and falling on the barren earth as she angrily articulated each sound, told him that he should have been dead, that it would have been better if he were dead and buried.

They had told her that he was dead and she had felt the most horrible and excruciating heartbreak and to see him there as her thoughts run wild, her emotions rolling and rapid, overwhelming her. A long time ago, long before that morning at Achnacarry, they had spent a night together. They had made love. No, to borrow one of the words that some of their blunter and more shameless friends used with surprising frequency: they had fucked. They had fucked while the rest of their amicable company got drunk on cheap beer and Poitín.

“I told papa I would tour Scotland.”

“Are you going to?”

“Maybe,” she replied, though to tour the country that she’d have to make up her mind and leave. “I don’t know.”

He laughed. “Well, now that you’re here, it doesn’t seem to be much of a stretch to say that you did a grand tour of Scotland’s lochs.”

“True.” She paused, considering whether or not to go on speaking and the implications that her words inevitably contained. “One of the girls who help us out with things heard me speaking on the telephone. She heard me speak to you and winked, she must have thought that I was planning to tryst.”

And that day on the phone, her friend’s wedding invitation still in her hand, it did sound as if she and Fitz were planning to tryst. The content of her suitcase would also be indication enough: the package of French letters and that funny little speech she had written down, a crumpled piece of paper with a declaration of feelings and a mess of words. But that day! Out of excitement she had called him and he had invited her to spend an afternoon with him after the wedding - trembling voices out of happiness and nervousness, shaking hands and ever such anticipation that the whole thought of an afternoon spent with Fitz had started to have something illicit to it, even more than that night when they were still at university.

“That night, all those years ago, you said-”

“I know what I said, Jemma.”

“It must have taken you a great deal of courage and clarity of judgement.”

And she envied him now as much as she had envied him back then, his ability to skip the inanities and reach for the larger thought. They had been friends, although certainly not best friends, and he had admitted with so little effort and a little bit of embarrassment that he’d like more from her, from them, that he would have liked to explore all possibilities. That night, they had finished their cigarettes under a starry sky with pale and silver moonlight illuminating the street outside the pub and had gone to his place to make love, fuck, talk in between the sheets. And if Fitz, quiet and pasty Fitz, shy Fitz, managed to be brave and voice his feelings why couldn’t she do the same now? Why couldn’t she find the words to say that she still wanted more and she wanted them to be friends on top of that?

“To be fair,” she added before he could provide her with an answer. “I said I’d go.”

She said she’d go and didn't. Now, it seemed almost inevitable to wonder how much of the lingering and tiptoeing was done with the specific intention to miss the ferry. Not on purpose, but certainly providing her an excuse to stay if only for a little while longer, granting them a chance. She said she’d go, but go where? Now that the ferry was gone and darkness was setting, she might as well stay and finish her tea even though the brown liquid in their cups must have turned cold hours ago.

“It wasn’t my intention to miss the last ferry.”

“I thought not. To be fair, you seemed perfectly excited to go back.” He stopped and smiled at her again before going on and saying, “And now you’re stuck in some forgotten place between Loch Glencoul, Loch Gleann Dubh and A’ Chàirn Bhàin.”

“There are worse place to get stuck.”

“Don’t tell me, I went to the front.” He paused. “Are you cold or-”

“I’m fine, thank you.”

“It’s just… These bloody windows let in some icy draughts. I could give you one of my jumpers.”

“I’m fine.”

“And I’d change them, but I’m not sure it would be worth it. And you should see them in the morning, covered in frost. The most beautiful sight.”

“What was it that you always used to say?” asked Jemma. “Bha something, the frost had beautified the window.”

“Bha an reothadh air sgèimh a chur air an uinneig.”

“That,” she replied. “What?”

“Are you going to tell me that it wasn’t your intention to stay this long?” asked Fitz. “Unless you're silently taking the blame and stoically suffering the cold. That's worse.”

“No, it’s not that. I mean, I could open my suitcase and take out a jumper.”

But to open the suitcase would mean making up her mind or worse, impose her presence on him. It would be an action that would somehow force them to face the consequences. There was still time to book a room in a hotel or bed and breakfast, but if she did anything to imbalance the situation, there would be no going back. She could open the suitcase and maybe he’d feel sorry for her, he’d think her to be rather pathetic, and consequently ask her to stay the night and tell her that he could easily sleep on the sofa. Maybe he'd see the French letters and think that she was there for sex or that she had someone, both things completely untrue. Fitz’s voice already sounded like an invitation to stay and see if the frost on the windows did indeed beautify them. Had he not told her to stay not five minutes ago? And if it was an invitation, why couldn't she just say something and accept? After all, from the very first moment, they had been stuck in a carpenter's vice.

“We agreed to drink tea.”

They had agreed to it after having come back from their walk, from lunch, fish and chips eaten at the pier, their legs dangling from the wooden construction, his dog lying next to them, begging for a piece of fish at every chance he got, watching the ferry and the fishermen on their boats leaving the harbour and carrying people from one side of the loch to the other. They had agreed to it and she had thought, naively and innocently, that there would be disappointments and a violent silence waiting for them for wasn’t it like that how these things went?

“One cup. You said that you’d go after one cup.”

Only the teacups never left the saucers.

Only that disappointment never came.

After the war, they met in London only to discover that there were no words to say, that there was no triumph in their survival and there still wasn’t any triumph now, three years on. They had discovered, much to their dismay, that they had exhausted all possibilities, that most of their friends were dead and that there was nothing left to do other than awkwardly stand there and feel judged by the ghosts of their former selves, who seemed to look at them mockingly. That day, on her train back to Yorkshire, she had thought for the first time in years, that she had lost him forever, Fitz, a person who had once meant so much had become a stranger.

“I went to visit Huner in London,” he said suddenly, looking away. “Some time ago.”

“Oh.”

To go to London and not tell her. Hunter could have mediated between them, he could have made things easier or they could have come to Yorkshire for half a day. A train could have been arranged. Anything to escape her life and feel like her former self again.

“There’s nothing like spending time with Hunter to make one collect one’s thoughts.”

“I suppose not.

“I’ve been very muddled as of late-”

“How is Hunter?” she asked, cutting him off.

“Living his life. He’s seeing some American.”

“Bobbi?”

“Yes, she’s the one. Do you know her?”

Jemma shook her head. “No, he told me over the telephone. I haven’t seen Hunter in yonks.”

Hunter was another of those people who had managed to get his life back, who managed to live. Like her friend who got married not three days ago, the one she had met at Achnacarry. Like Fitz with his life and his job and his lovely little house. Fancy it being her, the one who went back to her old life, the one who spent her days pretending that houses like her parents’ weren’t being sold or given to the National Trust, pretending that names still carried importance. But there was something about that life that angered her so much, even now as she was sitting miles away from home, something that was both alluring and tantalizing despite the rottenness and the darkness it hid so well: the parade softened her fear and nightmares, it made her life bearable.

“I’m sure he’d be more than happy to see you in person,” says Fitz. “He’s well, keeps himself busy.”

“While I don’t?”

“That’s not what I was saying and before you say anything, I wasn’t thinking it either.”

“But you would have been right, don’t you see? Papa spends his days drinking. He never knew how to handle his own personality particularly well, never truly recovered and then such news, I don’t think he has it in him to stop. And I spend my days nursing papa because there’s nothing else to do.”

She spent her days nursing her father and suppressing her feelings, never thinking about them and never talking about them, because that’s what people like them did: they either drunk or swallowed it down. And just like that, the days passed and turned into weeks which turned into months which ultimately turned into years. The days all looked the same, no sense of purpose, nothing to help get rid of the feeling of moving in a quagmire. It was her against apathy and the latter was always winning.

Meanwhile, her mother, whom she hadn’t seen in years, lived in London. There were and had always been rumours about a lover, though no one cared, least of all her father: they had done their duty and had failed miserably. They loved her in their own ways, spoiling her, never saying no, but had always wanted a son as if the birth of a son might have worked wonders. What an immense responsibility to place on such a phantomatic and unborn child and what a ghastly thing to run into her own face. Above all, it had provided her parents with the perfect excuse not to save their marriage.

“My parents can’t stand each other, they’re not friends.” She paused, remembering at once Fitz’s family's situation. “I’m sorry, I know that-”

“I was right,” said Fitz, vaguely gesturing with his hand. “You never took me to Yorkshire to see that old cedar tree with the charms hanging from its branches.”

“You never took me to Glasgow.”

“No.”

And she knew why as much as he did. Probably, preferably. They were trying to live their lives and find themselves, trying to distance themselves from their respective families and conditioning. Places shaped you, you weren’t the same person in Glasgow as you were in London. What if Fitz didn’t like the Yorkshire version of herself? That would ruin it all.

That life, her life, it brought out the worst in people. He’d be disappointed by her as much as everyone else in her life had been and she couldn’t bear it.

“Does it matter?” asked Fitz.

Jemma shook her head. “And here I was, thinking that you were dying to visit Yorkshire. It’s a wonder you survived.”

Fitz laughed and took her hand, his thumb gently caressing her skin. A careful touch, a warm touch filled with tenderness and yearning. For a moment she felt like a hungry, touch starved animal, ready to beg for more, but what was the point? She was the daughter of two people so unsuited for each other that they had made each other miserable, what’s more, they had dragged their own child in the middle of it. The apple never falls far from the tree, she wanted to tell him. All of this was like poison spilling from one generation to the next, slowly dripping and consuming them all. So let her spare him the circus, the parade, the heartbreak and everything else.

“Remember that night at university?” she asked as she retrieved her hand. “I’d never have… Don’t you see?”

He looked at her in bewilderment, completely flabbergasted, and said, “What am I to see?”

“You analyzed my character.”

“I remember.”

“I wouldn’t have let another soul-” she exhaled sharply. “Maybe you were right.”

“Don’t say that, Jemma.”

“Oh, but it’s true. I came round to that opinion a long time ago, people must have thought me to be a fool.”

“Are you unhappy?”

“No, but I’m not happy either. What a ghastly life this is! Mind if I smoke?”

“No.”

She fumbled with the package of self-rolled cigarettes and lit a match and then the cigarette, the smoke filled the air in a mesmerizing pattern. Out of courtesy, she opened the window, blowing the smoke in that direction.

“I’m writing a book about a girl who wants to be a highland cow.”

“Why does she want to be a cow?”

“Funny you’d ask. Every day she walks three miles across the countryside to go to school. She’s at an age where she must start to take decisions and thinks that life would be much easier if she were a cow.”

He chuckled. “I’m sure it’ll be swelling. What does your editor think?”

“They’re delighted. Why did you become a teacher, Fitz? Why here? You had the whole world at your feet. You were the brightest, the smartest, the most dashing boy I knew.”

Lifetimes ago, all she remembered was that one night spent together and her desperate attempts to impress him. She used to be young. She used to have dreams and feel alive, on top of the world. She used to see beauty despite the horror. Not anymore, she felt young and incredibly aged as well, passive, a mere witness to other people’s lives.

“I like to think that children these days have a reasonable chance of enjoying their lives. Mischievous and curious, I like teaching them things. It’s a job like any other.”

“Not like any other, surely. Not like any other at all. You have to like it, lest you fuck them all up.” She paused. “Do you like it?”

“I do.”

“So it wasn’t an accident, something you regret?”

He shook his head in denial. Then he asked, “Didn’t you choose to become a writer?”

“No. I dare say, I- I sent a letter to some newspaper and that was it, I was feeling rather polemic and angry, upset even. I never thought I’d go on writing, but the hospital didn’t need any nurses or granny forbade them to hire me, and I could never live in London. It was all so boring. Yes, I was bored to death with my life, bored to death of the world. You see, papa... In Yorkshire, I’m allowed to do as I please, whereas in London with mama… She’d try and find me a husband and that would be… They never learn, do they?”

“And are you looking for a husband?”

“God, no!” She laughed. “Though for the longest time, I thought you had gotten married.”

It seemed fitting at the time. The one thing missing to complete his picture-perfect life. Little children who looked like him and run around in the garden, playing, bring chaos and havoc and ever so loved. A wife from his same social background who understood things and hadn’t spent most of her life living in privilege, someone who wasn’t out of touch with her feelings. Some extraordinary and lovely woman who deserved Fitz more than she herself did, someone who had never pushed him away while yelling that he should be dead, who thought it would have been better if he had died simply because they were selfish and had never owned the means to make sense of their feelings.

This though was as painful as it was happy and jealousy, that green-eyed monster that mocked her as she lay in bed late at night, trying to get in touch with her feelings. Feelings that always seemed to slip away, elusive things she has never made sense of. The idea of Fitz settling down brought joy and anger at once, but why choose her? Why settle for her and not for someone who didn’t have blood on their hands? He’d be happy and she’d go back to her wretched and miserable existence, trying her best to atone for her sins. She had found out long ago that she didn’t like herself very much, a surprising discovery hidden behind self-confidence and arrogance. And she was slowly turning into her parents, a ghost of a person, the perfect epitome of Englishness and aristocracy.

“Why?” he asked, bewilderment and entertainment oozing through the one-syllable word.

“I don’t know. At some point, you stopped answering my letters and I thought you were busy, otherwise entertained.” She joked and raised an eyebrow, smirking at him. “If you know what I mean, don’t let me say it out loud, please.”

She thought that he was somewhere in Scotland making love with his wife rather than fuck her, for such crude words hardly appropriate for his supposed marital bliss.

Fitz blushed and coughed, looking away. Bertram, his dog, looked up at the sudden noise, wiggled his tail and closed his eyes again, his light snoring soon filling the room again.

“There’s no one else,” he said at last. “And I must admit that I did look at all those wedding announcement they put in newspapers, always looking for your name.”

“Please. If I have any say in it, I’ll simply elope.”

“Now that sounds more like you.”

“You’re making fun of me, aren’t you?” She stopped and laughed. “But I tell you this, you'd have missed it. You should have checked tabloid newspapers.”

“Jemma?”

“Yes?”

“There was… Someone. I didn’t spend the last three years sitting here, boring myself to death and thinking about the past.”

“Neither did I,” she said awkwardly.

Though it meant nothing in her case, both parties had agreed on that. She fucked, brief encounters to distract themselves temporary feeling better but the high brought by a climax hardly ever lasted long. And what if she and Fitz slept together and the same happened, regret and shame washing over them as soon as they were back in their clothes or he discarded the condom, got up to use the loo? It was always like this: two people, one getting bored before the other and all the time there they lay unreachable, studying the way the sun shone through the window or listening to the noise coming from outside, while the other was still trying to reach out or find the perfect words to say to spare them both the embarrassment of such a transition.

It was usually her, the one who got bored, and she was ashamed to admit it most of the time: despite the dinners and trips to the pub, she always longed to go back to her peace and quiet, the mollycoddle of her own ancestral home. But this with Fitz was different and always had been. She had always been a coward and it was difficult to keep up with Fitz but there was something that made her want to reach him and imitate him, he seemed to have a knack for these things. When she was with him, she didn’t want to go back, she wanted to explore, be bold, brave and leap. Live as though her fingerprints were not all over that one death order.

For a moment she thought about adding _there's only ever been you_, but it would imply the need for a further distinction between sex and love. She had no desire to know how much of it mattered to him and how much it didn't. Instead, she said, “I never thought you to just sit here. We never made any promise, we weren't even friends!”

"No."

"Besides, if there's one thing this war has taught me is that it's better not to make any promises."

"Jemma."

“I could never think badly of you, Fitz. And I- I never really wished you to be dead.”

“Here I was, thinking you did. Jemma, I know.” He stopped, taking her hand. “Christ, Jemma, what we all went through-”

“But don’t you see?” Her voice was getting squeaky, anxious, louder and filled with urgency. “One has to stop making excuses for it. All I said, all I ever did, that was me! And I can’t blame the war or my upbringing, there’s always a choice and I chose to-”

Whose forgiveness was she looking for? Absolution from whom other than herself? It didn’t matter what he thought of her when she couldn’t agree with him. Time would tell, though there had been plenty of time and it hadn’t healed a thing. There was no sense! God had forsaken them all a long time ago. Sometimes, this awareness made her want to scream.

“We were immortal. We soon learned better, didn’t we?”

“Indeed we did.” He scoffed. “Listen, horrible and dreadful things happened to us. Bad things- We’ve got to live with it.”

“Move on?” she asked.

“You can’t.”

“No, I can’t.”

“But to live for...”

“There’s nothing much to live for, Fitz. Because you know that I what I want, I cannot have,” said Jemma. She felt her eyes tear at once, watering, and she blinked, holding back. She would not cry, she would think, as she often did, that she wasn’t in the mood to do it. Think of the headache that would follow.

“And what is it you want?” he asked.

“What I stand for is gone.”

“But you’ve got something to live for, Jemma.” Fitz looked away and took a sip of tea.

The clock in the corner chimed six.

“Why did you stop sending letters?” she asked. “Why did you stop?”

She wasn’t going to blame him for her low spirits, nor would she explain away and excuse her behaviour. Fitz had never been the centre of her life, but to have such kind and familiar words only for them to stop!

“You said that you’d always be there for me, you promised. It was the only promise we ever made. I’m worried, did I offend you somehow?”

“Of course not.”

“I shouldn’t have said those things. I embarrassed you, didn’t I? You’re feeling ashamed, don’t you? Because you had someone and here I was making fun of it. You probably cared and now you’ll think that I’m one of those people who think that sentimentalists should be stoned to death. I'm sorry, you probably felt like you couldn't tell me a thing because I'm a spoilsport who's angry at the world, who's angry at all those people who have a life while I'm stuck in some sort of idiot Eaden.”

“Jemma, please, I was merely trying to provoke you into bursting out of your glass cabinet. I-”

She ignored him. Her first sweetheart, perhaps the only one she ever had, and she was ruining everything.

“I don’t think you to be perfect, Fitz, far from it, but you’re a far better person than I am. I could stand here and swear that between the saddle and the ground, I never had a dishonourable thought, that I never made a dishonourable action. If I was or pretended to be a paragon of honourable behaviour, then I'd probably be an even crueller person.” Jemma looked at him and pushed the chair back, its legs screeched against the floor. Then, as her knuckles slowly turning white as she held the edge of the table, she said, “I’m leaving, no fuss. I think that’s best.”

“Why?”

“After all, I said I’d leave.” She paused. “I can see myself out.”

“Jemma, wait!”

“What now?”

“You still have to give me an answer,” he said as he walked towards her. 

“Answer what?”

“Would you like to stay for dinner?"

His words lingered in the air. Their whole future was balanced on such a fragile fulcrum. It was a fragile territory as if her answer to such a proposition would undoubtedly change and decide the course of events. There would be no going back and it would be too late to go and find some hotel. They’d have to make up their minds although now, after her harsh and angry words and his own tranquillity, it was clear that she was the one who had to decide what to make of her life and what to make of this.

"Won’t you stay for a couple of days? We can...”

“Yes, I’d like that. I think I will.”

**Author's Note:**

> \- Achnacarry (Achadh na Cairidh) is a small hamlet, private estate, and a castle in the Lochaber. During WW2, the estate gained fame as Commando Training Depot for the Allied Forces (March 1942 to 1945).


End file.
